


Health of the Body, Health of the Mind

by Kasuchi



Category: Bones
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/pseuds/Kasuchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>For four and a half days, Booth calls her wife.</i> Six weeks of recovery for both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Health of the Body, Health of the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Bridges the gap between S4 and S5, with some spoilers for 5x01 "Harbingers in the Fountain."

For four and a half days, Booth calls her wife.

It's unnerving. Brennan counts the days, then the hours and minutes, the numbers swirling in her head. Angela sends her sympathetic looks, and Brennan catches her speaking in hushed tones to Cam and Hodges when she's in her office.

They should know better than to think she doesn't notice. She chooses not to ask.

***

It's weird. Booth looks at her like...like she can't describe, this expression that's so intensely happy it almost physically hurts her. She can't be in the same room as him for too long because of it. Angela tells her that Booth asks about her, about where "Bren" is and what she's doing that's keeping her so busy. Angela is starting to get accusatory.

"Sweetie, you can't avoid him." She crosses her arms across her torso. "He needs you right now."

Brennan shuffles papers and clicks email windows closed and finally turns to Angela. "I'm going on a dig in Guatemala."

***

The doctors say _he's fine, he's fine, he's fine_ but all she sees are his dark eyes seeing her but not really _seeing her_.

Booth stops calling her _Bren_. If he does, he's quick to correct himself, call her _Bones_ instead.

They converse, thinly veiled sessions of refilling his memory banks disguised as conversations about their favorite foods and books and his love of rock music and on and on. She hums bars of _Hot Blooded_ and he smiles and nods along and her chest aches because he doesn't remember the bomb in her apartment from that night.

She brings him lo mein and bacon (not together, of course), cheeseburgers and ice creams and he accepts them indiscriminately with a smile, his face still bearing that wonderful, horrible expression that drives her insane and makes everything hurt.

***

Her writing is stalled out.

The open, blank document looms before her every time she double-clicks the file, the blinking cursor making her feel antsy and uncomfortable. It's like she's being judged for deleting her last book, all of those words lost. Her word processor is blaming her, irrational and ridiculous as that seems.

She closes the laptop, the blank screen irritating her, and leans back in the airplane seat and turns her gaze up at the command panel above her. She focuses on the reading lamp, the sunshine glinting off of the bulb.

She wants to write the sequel to the book she deleted, the one with the nightclub and the murder and all of the witnesses not cooperating. Follow the saga of Mr. B and his beautiful, intelligent wife Bren through the pregnancy and the hijinks of their colorful cast of nightclub workers. There's entirely too much potential there, her mind insists.

But. _But_. It means taking a hard look at herself, at Booth. At Booth, who right now is not himself, is her creation come to life. He sees her like how she imagines Mr. B looks at Bren, and some part of her knows she doesn't deserve it. Irrational as it is, she doesn't deserve that expression, not when somehow she's the one who made him this way.

She sighs and closes her eyes. She hates having to be irrational.

***

She rewrites the book, just once.

It takes her the better part of two days. Guatemala's internet is less than reliable, and it's the weekend and she doesn't have to work. She sits on the patio of her residence and types, from lunchtime to midnight, and then again the next day. The housekeeper finds her on Monday morning dozing on the patio, computer crying out for a power cord.

When she plugs it in and boots up her laptop, she finds it there, again, pages and pages of text. Four hundred digital sheets of paper, double-spaced and formatted, words that represent a fantasy life that she could have if she indulged a mutual delusion.

She drops the document file into a hidden folder, filed away in the recesses of her computer in a password-protected folder.

It's as good as deleted. It's certainly not there anymore.

***

_Hey sweetie, it's Angela. I thought you'd want an update on Booth. He's doing a lot better. He still thinks he's in the other world sometimes when he's just woken up, and he's still got gaps in his memory, but he's doing better. I...I hate to say it, but I'm a little glad you're not here. It's helping him get better, I think._

Still, you should call him. He asks about you every couple of days.

I hope you're having a good time in Guatemala. Bring me back a poncho. I love you, girl. Bye.

***

Brennan buries herself (she smirks at the pun and misses her Booth, who would have laughed if he were beside her) in unearthing ancient skeletons. Ancient peoples, dead for millennia, smile their skeletal smiles at her unflinchingly. She dusts off each bone she finds carefully and places it into a tray for an assistant to whisk away for cleaning.

It's work. It takes her mind off of the three voicemails unheard on her phone, takes her mind off of the hidden and buried file on her hard disk, takes her mind off of the idea that the man that she holds more precious than any other in her life could possibly, irrevocably be altered from the one that she's gotten to know in the last five years.

Takes her mind off of the fact that, maybe, it's all her fault, that she's responsible for making him as confused as she is. She could have read him anything - why, _why_ did she choose her work-in-progress novel?

Old casefiles would have been better. Or an anthropology textbook. _Anything_.

***

Six weeks pass by immeasurably fast, it's distressing. Suddenly, all of the Aztecs are returned to their resting places, bones logged and measured and plaster molds in the works. She doesn't need to be here for the plaster molds, and she has a feeling that perhaps, now, it is time to return.

The four-and-a-half-hour flight is wholly uneventful, and she sleeps on the plane, mind mercifully quiet. She has dreams in her half-awake state, confused images that flash and scatter as she tries to hold onto them, bright splashes of color bursting against the insides of her eyelids.

She starts awake as the pilot tells the passengers that landing is imminent and could they fasten their seatbelts?

She shakes her head and pulls back her hair and rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms.

***

Angela hugs her warmly when Brennan finally finds her beside the baggage claim.

"It's good to see you, too, Angela," she offers, hands releasing the bags she'd kept in the cabin with her. Angela _is_ her best friend, and she has missed the other woman.

"We missed you," Angela states, releasing her but standing close as the carousel whirrs to a start. "All of us."

"That's good," Brennan responds, unsure of what the correct series of words here is. Angela is clearly fishing for something, but Brennan is too tired to ascertain just what.

"What do you want to do after we get your luggage?"

Brennan stretches, arching her back and rising onto her toes. "Mmm, I'd like to go home, take a bath, maybe check in with Cam later."

Angela has an inscrutable expression on her face. "You mind coming with me to see someone before I drop you off at home?"

"Okay, sure." Brennan grabs her giant, blue suitcase off the conveyor belt and straightens. "Who is it?"

Angela smiles widely. "Her name is Avalon Harmonia."

***

She hugs Booth, and she is relieved to see him, unkempt and underdressed as he is.

_(She kind of likes seeing him like this, thinks he is somehow more himself when he is this way.)_

More than that, though, she is relieved to see him not looking at her with that horrible, wonderful expression, the one that makes her feel like she's somehow sunshine after a terrible rainstorm.

He's okay, and so is she, and they will be okay together. _All shall be well._

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from a G.K. Chesterton quote: "The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind."


End file.
